The final straw came when the Daily Caller news website led a story about a professor’s conspiracy theories with “Florida Atlantic University is quite obviously the worst place in the United States to attend college."

Ouch!

So Student Government President Robert Huffman has led a campaign to try counter not only the nasty rhetoric of that article but also the general negative attention the university has received from mainstream media for things like the “step on Jesus” incident and the botched prison company stadium naming deal. He’s asking FAU students, alumni and supporters to put out more positive messages about FAU in social media.

“There has been a lot of negative attention directed towards our university as a whole. Today we were called ‘America's worst university' because of comments made by one of our professors,” a posting on the student government’s Facebook page says. “Now it’s our time, as students, to show the country what we are really about and why we love FAU. Please use the hashtag #WEareFAU on social media outlets Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Vine, etc. It’s time for us to make a stand!”

If student government leaders hoped the FAU student newspaper, the University Press, would sign onto this campaign, they were mistaken.

The UP's Ryan Cortes called it a “silly campaign” in a commentary on the UP website. He said FAU got bad PR because it did dumb things. FAU must admit its failings and work to repair the damage, Cortes argued

“It’s not fixed by tweeting what you love about FAU and pretending what just happened didn’t,” he wrote.

This may be a horrible year for FAU in a lot of ways, but when it comes to student engagement and dialog, it’s probably one of the best ever.